The Polaris Family of Wires: Tough on Cracks

By Pat A.

Maintenance welders are a special breed. They don’t weld in climate-controlled factories in perfect conditions. They work in rough weather, on contaminated metal they can’t identify, often without enough time to do the job they want to do. Very commonly they are welding on something they have never seen before in a situation they have never been in before. Standard wires were never intended to be used in these conditions, but this is exactly what Rockmount Polaris wires are designed for.

Why do Polaris wires produce better results?

Our Polaris family of wires include Polaris Maximum Shield Pro, Polaris MIG or Polaris Ultra Flux Core, so whether you are looking for self-shielded flux core wire, gas-shielded flux core wire or MIG we have a solution for you. Our products are highly alloyed, stronger, more flexible and tougher by far than standard wires. They are designed to weld a much wider range of base metals and because of their higher deoxidizer content, produce perfect results on dirty steel. It’s simple. Better wire, better results.

But Polaris wires cost more.

Nope. 98% of the cost of a maintenance repair is downtime, labor and replacement part costs, less than 2% is the cost of the wire. Trying to save a dollar or two on the wire when the real savings are on the other side of the equation just doesn’t make sense.

Polaris wires will save money, downtime, labor, replacement parts, and do it easier and faster, leaving the welder time to do another job. With Polaris wires everyone benefits – welder, shop foreman, purchasing agent and owner.

Here are the facts.

Maintenance welds are the toughest of all welds to make properly For a long-lasting maintenance repair it is essential to maximize the combination of three critical parameters:

• 1. Tensile strength: Maximum load that a material can support without fracture when being stretched. Expressed in units of pounds per square inch (PSI).
• 2. Elongation: The measure of a weld’s ability to stretch without permanent deformation. Expressed as a percentage.
• 3. Toughness: Measured using a Charpy test. A sample weld is frozen to 20 F and impacted. The higher the impact required to break the sample the tougher the weld.

Here is how Polaris Maximum Shield Pro stacks up against one of the most common wires used in maintenance shops – ER70 S-6

To summarize, Polaris wires are stronger, more ductile and are roughly three-times tougher than ER70 S-6 wire. On every parameter, Rockmount Polaris wires win, hands down.

Our wires aren’t just great on paper, they’re also great in the field.

A large mining customer faced a serious dilemma when their Caterpillar 5230 shovel went down with a broken pin boss. With downtime at $4500 per day on this important piece of equipment they needed to get it up and running quickly.

Replacing the part was out of the question. A new housing would literally take 8-10 months to produce. They didn’t even ask what a new one cost. They would have to repair it.

Their local heavy equipment dealer was called, and after a week of welding the repair was made. The weld lasted a day.
They called Rockmount. After discussing the problem with the Rockmount representative Polaris Maximum Shield Pro wire was recommended thanks to its high strength, high elongation and outstanding toughness.

100 lbs of Polaris/Pro was purchased at a cost of $1800, labor costs were calculated to be $1200. $3000 for a repair that was an unparalleled success.

Here is what their Maintenance Supervisor said.

“If it needs to be done both right and fast, then Polaris is the way to go! We used Polaris Maximum Shield/Pro on the pin boss of a Caterpillar 5230 shovel that re-cracked one day after our local dealer spent a week welding it. That was four years ago, and the Polaris weld is still going strong. Using Polaris Maximum Pro saved us well over $100,000.”

Feature	Polaris Maximum Shield Pro	ER70 S-6
Tensile Strength	90,000 PSI	Toughness
Elongation	29%	75 ft. lbs at -20F
Toughness	28%	25 ft. lbs at -20F